


Rehearse more obscenely and courageously

by belmanoir



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Preseries, Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:58:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geoffrey convinces Darren to roleplay Marlowe/Shakespeare with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rehearse more obscenely and courageously

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Petra LeMaitre (Petra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/gifts).



> Inspired by [this conversation](http://petra.dreamwidth.org/382677.html) and [this fic](http://petra.dreamwidth.org/383807.html). So it goes without saying that this is for Petra, who also beta'd and came up with the title.
> 
> Also available [as a podfic](http://petra.dreamwidth.org/386067.html) by Petra.

"Ho there, my fine young lad," Darren said, in an even stranger accent than his ordinary one. Darren's accent was one of the college's great mysteries. Geoffrey was afraid to ask, for fear it would turn out to be a speech impediment.

"Come on, Darren," he expostulated. "'Ho there, my fine young lad'? Put a _little_ effort in, can't you?"

Darren deflated. "Fuck, Geoffrey, I am not doing this if there is going to be criticism. I cannot take looking stupid _and_ your criticism. There is too much vulnerability associated with sexual relations as it is." He looked down in distaste at the worn green doublet and off-white breeches Geoffrey had liberated for him from the costume shop.

"You don't look stupid. And it's not criticism, it's honesty!"

"With you it's hard to tell the difference," Darren snapped. "Now do you want me to do this or not? Because I seem to remember you begging."

"Yes, I do."

"Then no criticism."

Geoffrey sighed. Trust Darren to take half the fun out of things. Of course, in this case that still left a hell of a lot of fun. "Perhaps we're going about this wrong. Kit and Will shouldn't already be in Kit's bedroom. They'd--"

"They'd meet at a bar," Darren finished resignedly. "You men and your obsession with alcohol. Far more intoxicating effects on the senses can be achieved merely by exposing the mind to new paradigms of--"

"You're a man too," Geoffrey pointed out.

Darren rolled his eyes like Geoffrey was missing the point. "The theater bar, please. I have no desire to finish my evening in the emergency room, the victim of some sort of 'hate crime.'" His air quotes were both annoying and inexplicably erotic.

###

Geoffrey walked in. Darren was sitting at the bar, as agreed, a pint of beer in front of him. He wasn't drinking it, but some things were too much to ask for, for example that Darren _not_ be lecturing the girl next to him about her incorrect use of the word "lexia." "Of course, in the original French--" he was saying.

Geoffrey slid onto the stool beside him. Darren didn't stop talking, but he knew he was there. Geoffrey could tell. Sure enough, Darren finished his lecture with a flourish and pointedly turned his back on the girl. "Kit. Shall I send for ale?"

Geoffrey shook his head. "I have no need of it; there's headier pleasures in thine eyes. I'm drunk already."

Darren's eyes glinted behind his glasses. "You stole that from Dostoyevsky."

"What?" Geoffrey had no idea what Darren was going on about.

" _Crime and Punishment_ is a surprisingly homoerotic work," Darren informed him. "Although there's also 'Drink to me only with thine eyes,' and probably a dozen other examples just in the canon. Perhaps you are merely guilty of hopeless pedestrianism, rather than plagiarism."

"Who's criticizing now?"

"You have a point. My apologies." He actually took a sip of his beer, grimacing, and Geoffrey remembered that Darren lectured more when he was feeling self-conscious. "Thou must be drunk, an thou thinkst to win me with such tired words as these. There's schoolboys enough who could wage war as neatly, and wield threepenny Latin in their arsenal too."

"Must ever, like the hedgehog, prick that which seeks only to give thee succor?"

"The hedgehog is prick'd out to guard from those who'd make a meal of him." Darren sounded as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, but Geoffrey was sure from the way he lingered on "meal" that the double entendres were intentional. "Our companies are rivals; so must we be."

"And yet thy company is my one object: I'd trade a fortune for it."

Darren raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Easy to say, when thou hast not one to trade. But my company cannot be bought; it must be wooed." He spread his hands wide with a smooth little flourish; he was starting to enjoy himself.

"Then be wooed! You scorn my words, and yet my tongue has been called skillful." He let the tip of his tongue rest on his upper lip in that way he knew drove Darren wild.

"And thy pen too, I make no doubt," Darren said dryly. "Forgive me, but my door's shut tight, my walls defended. If thou wouldst breach them, bring on thy battering ram; but sieges often fail."

Geoffrey slid his stool closer and took Darren's hands. Darren shivered, and that made it easy to ignore the lexia girl's snickers. "You say our companies are rivals; this night let's form a company of two, and in each other's company we'll play such passion as stage ne'er saw."

Darren began to pull his hands away. "Nay, but--" 

Geoffrey seized them tighter. "O, hedgehog, where's thy yielding softness? Show it me!"

"I've none to show." He swallowed. "I'm hard as iron."

Geoffrey blinked, and looked down. _Oh._ Well, that had been the world's shortest siege. "Then let's find a stage to suit us--trade floorboards for mattress-slats."

Darren stood shakily. "And what audience, pray?"

"My four walls, and my roof-beams; we'll make them 'plaud us."

They stumbled hastily back to Geoffrey's apartment, which was thankfully only a block away. On the stairs, Geoffrey lost control and pushed Darren up against the wall and kissed him.

"Thou'rt too hasty at the last," Darren murmured. "The end's in sight." But he didn't help to disentangle them. With a superhuman effort, Geoffrey did it himself and opened the door to his apartment. Darren slammed it shut again when they were inside and ducked into the bedroom, taking off his glasses and setting them down by Geoffrey's alarm clock. "Having won me, I am thine t'command. What wouldst have me do?"

Geoffrey thought he might spontaneously combust. "If I'm thy lord, thou'dst better kneel."

Darren drew in a sharp breath and gestured at the bed. "On the stage, or off it?"

To fuck Darren, like this, would be amazing, but Geoffrey didn't have the patience. Another time, maybe. "Off. Thy mouth was made for words, and yet I'll find for it another use as natural." The thought of it, of that mouth--Darren's mouth, and Will's mouth, all tangled up together--the words that had come out of those mouths, the sacredness of them, and-- 

Darren got on his knees. "My mouth hath oft spoke things I could not say with words," he said, and for a second the illusion shattered entirely. Darren was worse at verbally expressing affection than anyone Geoffrey had ever met, but the subtext of his kisses was fairly obvious.

"Prithee--" 

Darren smiled one of his smug crooked smiles and unknotted the laces of Geoffrey's breeches. When loosed, the breeches fell to the floor in a rather ridiculous fashion, but Darren didn't seem to care. He wrapped his fingers around Geoffrey's cock--Geoffrey mentally edited in inkstains--and took it into his mouth. Geoffrey groaned, no longer able to say anything more complicated than "fuck," "I beg thee," and "sweet Lord, thy tongue--"

He had expected this part, at least, to be familiar, but it wasn't, or not completely. Darren was using his hands more than usual, a finger behind his balls, and every now and then Geoffrey felt a hint of teeth. Darren was in character. Geoffrey looked down the expanse of his own linen shirt and red jacket to Darren, kneeling in his doublet and hose, his dark hair a mess, and they really might have been Marlowe and Shakespeare, screwing in some Elizabethan motel on Sunday when the theatres were closed. 

Geoffrey make an inarticulate sound and came.

Darren waited until he'd stopped shuddering and then took his mouth away, shoving him towards the bed. 

"Be patient, give me an entr'acte," Geoffrey said, falling bonelessly back on the bed, but when Darren undid his own laces Geoffrey pulled out his cock and stroked him. Darren's face hovered over him, looking, as usual, oddly exposed without his glasses, as if he were only willing to make these funny sex-faces because he couldn't see himself. Geoffrey sped up. 

"Kit!" Darren gasped, and oh my _fuck_ that was--

Darren scrabbled at Geoffrey's shirt, pushing it up and out of the line of fire before coming all over Geoffrey's stomach.

He supported himself above Geoffrey for a few moments more, panting.

"I told you this was a good idea," Geoffrey said smugly.

Darren rolled over to lie beside him. He didn't offer to help Geoffrey clean up. "Fine, fine, you're always right. Happy now?"

Geoffrey was.


End file.
